Julio Urias continues to amaze

I don’t have the superlatives to describe what 20-year-0ld, Julio Urias did yesterday against the Reds but however you want to describe what he did, it was exactly what the Dodgers needed, and the last thing anything should have expected from someone who just turned 20-years-old barely a week ago.

Urias turned in six shutout innings, shutting down an offense that had humiliated the Dodger pitching staff the previous two games.

Urias gave the rotation the go a head to get 18 outs in a game, I don’t think they knew it was possible until they saw someone do it.

Urias gave the Dodgers the lead in the highly contested NL Western Division

Baseball Reference still considers the 2016 season to be the 19 year old season for Urias. And so using their criteria we can see that Urias keeps moving up the 19 year old season leader-board.

Urias broke Joe Moellers fifty-four-year-old record for LAD strikeouts for a teenager by fanning four in his 7/21/16 start giving him 48 compared to Joe’s 46.

With his start last night Urias now has sixty two strikeouts moving him into 9th place for strikeouts for National League pitchers, 19 or younger since 1958.

As you can see, Urias also holds the second highest SO9 rate of any teenager since the LAD came into existence in 1958 using 50 strikeouts as the threshold. Just Dwight Gooden fanned hitters at a better rate then Julio.

He was 18 years old when he made his first start in the big leagues — he and Feller are the only two pitchers in baseball history to strike out 10 or more big league batters in a game before they turned 19 years old.

“Pitchers have to throw with pain,” his Reds manager Sparky Anderson told him. “Bob Gibson says every pitch he’s ever thrown cut him like a knife. You gotta pitch with pain, kid.”

Larry Dierker threw 1250 major league innings by the age of 23. Mike McCormick would win a Cy Young at age 28 in 1967 for the Giants but he was never really more than an average pitcher. Ray Sadecki became famous for getting traded from the Cardinals to the Giants for Orland Cepeda in 1966. Cepeda would lead the Cardinals to the 1967 World Championship while winning the MVP and eventually hit his way into the HOF.

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3 Comments

Urias SO/9 and SO/W place him at number two on the board next to Dwight Gooden.

Thank you modern medicine and awareness that Urias has only thrown 22% of the innings Gooden did,putting him at numerous eight on the list for this category.

AAA and MLB combined Urias has 102 IP on the season.
With 40 games remaining in the regular season if the Dodgers leave Urias in the rotation, that would give him six more starts. Six innings per start would give 138 IP, which seems reasonable.

Looks like the Dodgers need to keep Urias in the rotation until they clinch a playoff berth.

Clinch it asap Dodgers! Need to keep some innings for the playoffs and WS!